


The Second Son's Tale

by alyoraShadow



Category: Sevenwaters Trilogy - Juliet Marillier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24287527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyoraShadow/pseuds/alyoraShadow
Summary: There was a terrible irony in his story, for I feared the brother who had always wanted the land and authority for himself, who had always hated being second best, had found, once he was given the unexpected, the wonderful gift of Harrowfield for his own, that what he really wanted was something else entirely. For it was his fate always to desire that which he could not have.Or: Simon's story, after Daughter of the Forest.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	The Second Son's Tale

Simon is twenty years old when his brother makes him Lord of Harrowfield. 

It has been several months since Simon returned home. He has been busy adjusting to the reality of his life back at Harrowfield. Together, he and Red see that their uncle is brought to justice, that the affairs of the estate are set in order after his interference. Simon still has the leather pouch with the dark, silken strand of Sorcha’s hair, but he no longer takes it out and looks at it. He knows his brother feels her loss as well, but they never speak of her. Red, at least, has the estate to love in her place, and Simon envies him that sense of purpose.

“I’m giving you the estate,” Red says one night without warning. 

Red probably expects him to be grateful, Simon thinks. He has no reason to know how much Simon has changed, how long he has been away. But Simon is no longer the impassioned, impetuous boy who longed for a chance to prove his worth. He regards his brother calmly, face impassive. He does not say _You did not fight for her when she was yours, and yet you think she is still waiting?_ He does not say _I too, once thought she would wait for me._

Red’s voice is quiet and measured as he lays out his plan to leave them and travel over the water. His face does not give away what he is thinking. He speaks to Simon of numbers, of acres and crops and the people of the estate. He does not speak of his love for the woman who has caused him to give it all up. 

Simon has heard what people say about his brother and Sorcha, that the green-eyed sorceress cast her net over Lord Hugh so he was powerless to resist her. He had seen with his own eyes the way his brother looked at his wife. But Red had allowed her to go back over the waters, had appeared to dedicate himself entirely to the estate, and his choice will baffle his people. Simon understands, would himself give it all up for Sorcha if he had been allowed the choice. But he had not thought that his brother had it in him.

Their mother is tight lipped and silent, but she, too, does not share what she is thinking. She does not beg her older son to stay. She has seen how it is between him and the girl they call Jenny. She asks only of his plans so she may know what to expect.

“How do you know –” she asks, hesitantly. “Her brothers – what kind of place for you will there be in their home? How can you be so sure? What will you do, if --”

Simon hears the word his mother will not say aloud. _Will you come home, if they will not take you in? Is there a hope you might resume your rightful place, here among your people?_

He has often thought of the way had Sorcha had told him that he could make his own story, that the twists and turns of his tale were his to dictate. She was right, he thinks now, to tell him there were yet many branches his story might take. But the choice, though - the choice has never been his to make. It is Red who can have Sorcha if she wants him, Harrowfield if she does not. As for Simon, it seems his lot is simply to take what is not wanted and try to make a life from it.

“I will not return home,” Red tells their mother gently. He knows, perhaps, as Simon does, that the uncertainty of waiting would be worse for their mother than facing the loss outright. “I do not know that she will have me. I only know I cannot stay here.”

Simon thinks of the way Sorcha looked at his brother and does share his mother’s doubt. Knows as well as he knows his own name, knows his brother’s deep, unwavering commitment and Sorcha’s sweet and open nature. He knows how it will be between them.

“I can tell you how to get to Sevenwaters,” he tells Red, “and how to evade some of their defenses.” The welcome Red will receive once he arrives, Simon imagines, will be very different than the one he himself was given. It seems that even among their enemies, Red is able to command loyalty and respect without effort. 

_You are Lord of Harrowfield now, he tells himself. Do not dwell on what might have been. Accept the path that has been given you. There are good people here who love you and a land that needs you. Perhaps one day that will be enough._ He knows whose voice it is that speaks to him, thus. He wonders, bleakly, if one day it may be true. 

***

Simon is twenty-two years old when he marries Elaine.

It is his mother who first suggests the match. Simon laughs when she brings it up. It is true that Elaine’s position at Northwoods has been precarious since her father’s treachery has become known. Her kinsmen jostle to replace him, and many think to use Elaine to secure their own claim. Simon has no interest in doing so; gaining one estate without warning is more than enough for a lifetime. 

“The people of Harrowfield had no choice but to settle for me in Hugh’s absence,” he tells her. “Elaine need not be so constrained.” 

If his mother objects to the way he speaks of his place in the estate she does not say so. All she says is, “Have you considered what Elaine wishes?”

Simon is ashamed to discover he has never considered what Elaine wishes. He was self-absorbed as a child, he has come to realize, too busy resenting the hand he was dealt to spare much thought for those around him. He asks Elaine outright the next time he sees her what life she envisions for herself in the aftermath of her father’s treachery. He is astonished by her frank admission of love and touched by her practical proposal of marriage. She has always loved him, she tells him, she has always loved Harrowfield. Might they two not find a good life together?

He finds once again that the story has not been as he understood it at all. It is an unexpected gift, more precious even than Harrowfield, to have someone choose him over his brother. Elaine is a fine woman, and he knows he could scarce do better for himself and his people. He only hesitates a moment before accepting. 

Simon knows what it is to feel second loved, second best, and he does his best to ensure Elaine never feels that. He takes the part of him that yearns for something else and locks it away. The thought of Sorcha is no longer the bright talisman that had kept him from running mad, those long years away. Now her memory itself is what teases and cajoles, tempting him to give himself up to a reality outside of his own. But Simon is strong, strong enough to have resisted the Fair Folk for a span greater than mortal years. Strong enough not to waste his days longing for a life and a love that were never his own. 

As Elaine herself had observed, the two of them are well suited. She is strong-minded and wise, the strength of purpose she inherited from her father tempered by a deep sense of what is right. She becomes a fixture at Harrowfield in her elegant, sensible gowns and neat boots. It is Elaine who oversees the planting and harvests while Simon ensures the solidity of their alliances in the vacuum of power created by his uncle’s actions. It is Elaine who directs the storage of food for winter while Simon presides over the folkmoot. Simon was not trained to run an estate, as his brother was, but Elaine has been. He learns to rely on her, he who never relied on anyone as a boy. 

He knows, however much they come to share, never to speak of those long years away. He knows without asking that this is something one born and raised in Britton cannot comprehend. 

He forgets himself, once, and speaks carelessly of such matters. “It is not a night to be riding out, alone,” he says, “with a moon like that in the sky.”

Elaine laughs at him, amused, though without malice. “What a thing to say,” she says, smiling at him. “You sound like a warning out of a silly old tale.” She knows him well by then, well enough to see the stark loneliness in his eyes, though she does not understand its cause.

“What is it, Simon?” he shakes his head and averts his gaze, seeks to deflect her with talk of the estate. 

Elaine isn’t fooled. She comes over and sits next to him, places an arm around him and draws his head onto her shoulder. “I’m here, my dear,” she says, squeezing his shoulder gently. It is a gesture so unlike Sorcha, so entirely her own, and Simon is filled with affection for his wife. _I am not alone_ , he tells himself, and for the first time, he feels that might be enough. 

***

Simon is thirty-eight years old when he learns Sorcha has died. 

His brother arrives unexpectedly, the first time he has come home in almost twenty years, bearing tidings of his wife’s passing. Simon is shocked by the threads of gray in his brother’s flame-red hair, the deep lines in his face where tears would fall if he would allow himself to weep. 

Simon knows what it is to love Sorcha and lose her, but he finds he has no words of comfort to offer his brother. Such a love is a wonderful blessing and a terrible curse, as Simon well knows. Red does not say _I’m lost without her_ , but Simon can see it written in the lines on his brother’s face.

“You could stay here,” he offers. 

Red meets his eyes with an anguished look, the careful mask of control stripped away. Simon can tell his brother is torn between the desire to flee from and to seek out every reminder of her. Simon could tell him, _It does not matter where you go, you will see her here as well as there_. He knows well that such a love will be a lodestone for all of Red’s days, but he feels sure that Red will need to find some other purpose to give his life beyond the woman he has lost.

“Here?” Red repeats bleakly, “At Harrowfield?” And then, belatedly, as if he has just remembered, “On your estate?”

It is strange to hear Red speaking thus of their home. For Simon, Harrowfield was always Red’s, and even all these years later some part of him will always think of it that way. It is stranger still to be the one inviting him back, he who had always sought to evade his place in Red’s shadow. But he finds, as he looks at Red, that the old bitterness and jealousy have gone.

“There are those who still blame you for your defection,” he acknowledges, “but far more who remember the fair and just man who was the center of their world. You were trained to run the estate as I was not. I have no heirs, and Edwin of Northwoods watches me closely. I could use your strong hand and clear head.” 

“I promised my children I would return,” Red tells him. “I need to see them settled. After that – perhaps.” 

“You are always welcome here,” Simon says, and finds he actually means it. His brother clasps his hand, and Simon feels something inside him, something that has been broken so long that he no longer notes its absence, begin to mend. 

***

Simon is fourty years old when he first meets his niece Liadan. 

She looks so like her mother, it nearly takes Simon’s breath away the first time he sees her. There is much of Sorcha in her daughter, in the gentleness of her hands and the sweetness of her spirit. Simon sees elements of his brother in her, too, in the way Liadan stops to help deliver a lamb or plant an acorn. Simon only ever saw Sorcha and Red together for a few, difficult moments. But watching Liadan, Simon can imagine them together - Sorcha teaching their daughter the healing power of certain herbs, Red teaching her the importance of planting to replace what you reap. In Liadan, Simon can see the beauty of a union he has always had cause to regret. 

With her husband, Simon finds, he has much in common. Bran is a man of strength and purpose, and he takes to his duties at Harrowfield with the determination of a man for whom defeat is not an option. His new heir has more experience on the battlefield than in the farm field, and Bran shares Simon’s tendency to view the challenges of running an estate as a complex military campaign. He is also a natural leader, and the folk of the estate quickly learn to look past the forbidding scowl and unusually patterned face to see the steady, trustworthy man behind them. It is not long before Simon finds himself wondering how they ever managed without him. 

Liadan shares her mother’s talent for storytelling. The people of Simon’s household are not used to such things, but she does not seem to mind that this land does not share the customs of her childhood. Instead she sets out to create a new custom, telling a new tale each night after dinner. Tales of bravery and adventure, humorous tales, tales of love and loss, all come to life with the skillful rise and fall of Liadan’s voice. Simon knows the way such tales can speak directly to a man’s heart, can change the very limits of what he understands to be true. He never thought to hear them here, and he wonders if Liadan can see how her words affect his people. More than once he imagines the tales seeping into the ground, changing the very fabric of Harrowfield, before he catches himself and laughs at his own fanciful thinking.

It is to Liadan that Simon finally speaks again of his time with the Fair Folk, the first time in more than 20 years. He feels a profound sense of relief at the look of wonder and understanding on Liadan’s face. He had not thought, since he lost her mother, he would be able to share this part of himself with anyone again.

“The Fair Folk have a peculiar interest in this family,” Liadan says. He is warmed by the casual way that she links, with just a few words, the lives and people on both sides of the water. He has spent years thinking the distance an insurmountable one, but Liadan’s very presence has proven that this is not so.

“They can be a cruel and capricious people,” he says. “Their interest can be … unwelcome.”

Liadan nods. “Connor would say it unfolds as it must,” she said, referencing the uncle who has become an archdruid. “But I believe our choices are our own. I was told not to take Jonny out of the forest, and yet – ” she spreads her hands wide, the gesture encompassing all she has chosen and become.

Simon smiles at his niece. Her quiet strength and sense of purpose are so like both of her parents. 

“Your mother once told me the end of my tale was mine to make,” he says, the words out of his mouth before he fully decides to say them. “Sometimes I have felt, though, that this was far from the case for me. I have always wanted what I cannot have.”

Liadan studies him quietly, for a moment. “There is always a choice,” she says gravely. 

Simon thinks of this often, in the years that follow. He thinks of it as he chooses to dedicate his life to the people of Harrowfield, and to accept the love and respect they offer him in return. He thinks of it as he chooses to stop asking himself if those around him see him as second best, or if it is only he who feels that constant hunger for something more. It is, indeed, his fate to always want what he cannot have. But it is also his fate to have much that is good, and the blessing of his later years is that Simon learns that he can choose to have both longing and love, can choose to live without bitterness.

The end of the story, it turns out, is not entirely of Simon’s own making. And yet, it seems, that does not mean it cannot be a good one.


End file.
